Hidden
by swonderful2
Summary: We could have stayed. Or we could do exactly what we were doing now, and lived a little.  Five misfits escape from their horrendous orphanage to the small town of Lima, Ohio, where they learn to actually live.


**A/N: Hey all! So I know my other stories are on hiatus, but I have muse for this and another fic that will be up in less than two seconds. It's called Thirteen, if you could check it out that would be awesome. Since we can't actually write in a heart on here, I'll type it in words- *love hearts for everyone!***

**I'm aware this is a little short, and it will be pretty AU in the sense of the actual show plottage and realisticness. Bear with me, people. Enjoy!**

I wake up in a cold sweat, a shudder rolling through my body. As I sit up, my eyes hastily search the dark room, which is lighted only by the light of the moon infiltrating through the closed blinds. My hands find the thin covers and yank them off of my shaking body, and then I hop silently on to the rough floor. I am aware of soreness and aching spreading through me, and try not to moan in pain as I begin to tiptoe towards the door of the tiny room I inhabit with my 17 year old roommate Anna Payton.

The door pushes open easily, and creaks only slightly. I stick my head out of the doorway carefully, my disheveled hair getting into my eyes as I look for a wandering figure. I see none, and exit the room silently, closing the door with a barely audible click.

My bare feet find the hardwood floor a comfort as I hurry down the hall. The smooth feel is such a difference from the bumpy texture of the dorm room's cement. I acknowledge the numbers on the doors flying by; my vision is a complete blur as I race for his room, my heart pounding as I remember the dream.

The vivid images my mind had so cruelly created pop up once again, and I can't help a tear or two to dribble out of my eyes and onto my cheeks. This happens almost every night- pure terror causes me to find him. He is always waiting.

But not tonight, I find, as I sneak into the dorm room. My feet encounter the coldness again, and I sigh. My eyes find his sleeping body, and my heart drops a bit. I have made him wait so long that he has passed out from exhaustion.

Luke Mitchell is his name, and I love him with all my heart. Although we are not blood related, he is my brother- he grew up protecting me. My eyes moisten again as I watch his chest rise up and down. He is so strong, yet so very fragile. His messy black hair falls over his eyebrows, and dark purple circles are dominant under his shut eyes. His lanky body is filled out with muscles, but he just barely gets enough to eat every day.

As careful as I can be so not to awaken him, I lay myself down beside him on the narrow bed. Together we just fit on it, so long as neither of us moves. But I know Luke. He won't.

My head is nestled into his shoulder, his outstretched arm under my neck. I fear the new weight on him will cause him to wake up, but he doesn't make a sound. When I am sure he is sound asleep, I pull the covers higher to his chin because his skin is ice cold. I know we must find a way out- if not for me, but for Luke and the other four. But the waiting darkness overtakes me soon after that thought, and my eyes close.

Two weeks later a plan is finally formed during the late hours of the night. As we do our endless days of backbreaking work, we figure out the details. But before I talk about that, let me explain our story.

There are five of us. Luke, Anna, Luke's brother Aaron, Rory Lancaster, and then there's me. We live in a Californian orphanage: Miss Lane's Home for Teenaged Orphans. It is a large, colonial building of several stories. Couples- yes, it must be a married couple to adopt from this hellhole- that are interested in taking one of us home forever may only see the lobby. They are distracted by it's perfection, so they do not wonder about what lies above them. Everything is a lie- to the outside.

Miss Amelia Lane is a fat woman who has never known love. She is a violent alcoholic sent from the devil himself to torture the innocent. From 8 in the morning to 9 o'clock at night we work our butts off to keep this place standing, with only a seven minute break to eat the ghastly sludge she cooks up every day- but she'll swear that it's gourmet oatmeal. For breakfast and dinner we get half a slice of bread and a glass of tap water. We would refuse, but that's all we'll ever get.

We have uniforms, too. The girls wear black button up dresses and a dirty apron. The boys wear white collared shirts and charcoal pants, but the shirts get so dirtied during the week that they match the colour of the pants. We have no shoes. To add on to that the girls only get a new bra once every two or three years and both genders get new underwear every eight months. We each get a five minute shower every Sunday, which is also laundry day every other week.

I hope this plan works.

The Thursday of the week following the construction of our plan was a gloomy day like usual, although it was warm and sunny outside. We barely saw the outdoors- our skintones were as white as a sheet. It was a day filled with hope, though, for the five of us.

Miss Lane is doing her usual inspection, walking around with a bottle of cheap wine in her chubby hand while we scrub the toilets clean and polish the doorknobs. I receive a stinging slap for looking up instead of working, and as I pick up my torn rag I can still feel her sweaty handprint on my cheek.

At precisely 9 o'clock we are sent to bed with only the glass of water in our stomachs, because she had decided we were not worthy of our measly bit of bread today. While she had not been looking, Anna and I had stolen the loaf and shoved half and half each down our dresses. It was most uncomfortable walking back to the dorms in the usual single file lines, but I managed the wink to Rory so he would know we were successful, as a slice slid lower down onto my stomach.

After lights out Anna and I quickly began tying our sheets and pillowcases together, and all of the dresses we had grown out of that had been stuffed under our bunks. I pulled my knotted mahogany hair into a ponytail with some discarded string, and Anna did the same. Since we were placed on the second floor, the makeshift escape route was just going to work. We lowered the sheets and dresses down slowly, but it didn't quite reach the bottom. We were just going to have to jump off.

As stealthily as we could, we climbed down, the loaf halves now in the big pocket on our aprons as Lane couldn't see us. We had our most precious belongings with us- Anna had a book written by her father but never published, and I had a gold chain bracelet given to me by my parents as a newborn child. Too big then, it fit perfectly now, so the feel of it on my skinny wrist assured me.

I jumped off of the end of the last sheet and landed about a foot down safely, my naked feet relishing in the feel of crisp grass. Anna soon landed as well, not quite as gracefully which I could tell from the slight limp that appeared when we ran to the brick walls surrounding the lot. They weren't quite as tall as we were, so we scaled over them easily.

We made it to the safe place in record time- an abandoned store whose door was left unlocked all the time, which we knew from our rare trips outside of the orphanage. We sat down against a wall, a weird feeling in our chests as we began to nibble on the partly squished bread. We had actually gotten out. The plan had worked- well, so far.

Luke, Aaron, and Rory showed up about ten minutes later, but we couldn't be happy yet. We still had to get to the bus station and somehow work out how we would get to our destination. We would be going to a small town in Ohio, where no one would ever think to look for us. We hadn't quite worked out what would happen then, but we would when the time came.

The bus station was dead silent at this time of night, even though the next bus would arrive in about fifty minutes. We didn't talk- we sat on the bench without speaking, all five of us holding hands tightly. I began counting minutes.

Forty eight minutes and thirty six seconds later, a large white rectangle entered our bleary vision, and I realized something.

"Luke." I shook the tired boy gently. "Luke. We can't pay for the bus fare, we don't have any money!"

He smiled wearily at me and emptied his pockets, five ten dollar bills fluttering out. I gasped, shocked. It was the largest amount of money I had ever seen, and there was no way it was Luke's.

"Where did you get that? How do you have fifty dollars?" On a side note, yes we can do math, at Ma Dyane's Orphanage for Children we had a tutor who came in every Wednesday and Friday to teach us. But thats not important right now.

"Aaron and Rory distracted Lane and I stole it from her office." He told me. "She's taken a liking to them two over the years, it's pretty obvious, so they got off without so much a scratch, lucky bastards." He teased them jokingly, exhaustion evident in his voice.

A worried look must have come over my face, because Aaron laughed. "Jesus Kat, try not to look too much like our mother." I pouted and all four of them started laughing.

"It's not funny," I said, standing up because the bus was pulling in.

"Yes, it is." Aaron assured me with a serious tone in his voice, before we stepped on to the bus.

There was a bit of confusion with the bus driver- he couldn't figure out why five kids our age were 'out and about'. He was also reluctant to give us change, but we probably looked so desperate that he agreed.

We rode in silence, and I held the leftover bills in my hand. Money had an odd texture- rough and papery but yet it was smooth on the fingers. Well, I found it odd.

Hours later, I noticed the sun rising. I had always found sunrises fascinating, and when Luke and I awoke every morning we would watch it before I snuck back to my room. Now I tried to crane my neck so to see it better, but I couldn't move my body without waking the two slumbering boys whose heads were currently resting on my shoulders.

Luke and Aaron sat (or rather slept) beside me, and Rory and Anna sat in front of us, whispering quietly to each other. Those two were so in love that even the bus driver could see it, but they always denied it. It would happen one day, I would make sure of that.

The bus eased to a stop with a creak and I blinked slowly, having not slept at all throughout the whole bus ride. I nudged both of the boys beside me awake and stood, stretching out my aching body. My eyes found a graffitied sign hanging on the building beside which we were parked- LIMA STATION. I began heading for the opened doors of the bus, thanking the driver for his generosity in driving us. When I exited the vehicle, a blaring sun blinded me, causing me to place a hand over to shield them. The others followed suit behind me, Luke crossing in front of me and taking the lead as always. The others and I smiled; he worked way too hard for his own good.

We had been trudging along the sidewalk for a while now, and we had gotten some pretty weird looks, like we were homeless. Well, we probably looked like ones, with out any shoes and dressed in the dirtiest clothes imaginable. Eventually, we noticed a motel on the side of the road, and Luke held a hand up to stop us. "What?" Anna asked the question the rest of us were thinking. "Why have we stopped?"

Luke pondered for a minute, before speaking again. "We can stay here."

Rory shook his head. "We only have like thirty dollars, that's definitely not enough to pay for a room. We'll have to work to pay it off!"

"So that's what we'll do," Luke stated it so casually that we actually stopped in our tracks. We stood there for a while, watching him walk away and unsure what to do; so I just shook my head and ran to catch up with him.

I was unaware of the blonde head watching us.


End file.
